What are you reading

[Jaakko V.]

I recently finished Kawabata's Thousand Cranes. Enjoyed it completely. Kawabata is probably my favourite japanese writer. His stories aren't too amazing but his minimalistic writing is just too good. While most writers descripe a lot of the places, things that happen and so on, Kawabata leaves most of that out focusing on the interaction of the characters instead. While I enjoyed the book some of the things that cause distress or are taken as insults confuse me but maybe I should be japanese and live in that time period to understand them.

Kawabata is outstanding. His House of the Sleeping Beauties being my personal favourite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Sleeping_Beauties

[ghoulson]

M.A. Numminen: Till Helsingfors (Swedish translation. Rönells.)
Amusing reading about a Juho Nitty (alter ego of M.A. Numminen) and his encounters with avantgarde / electronic music and different kinds of culture. Not to mention his huge interest in alcohol and women.... autobiographical. Always wanted to read more about his early days so this was a great opportunity to do so. There is some good video footage around of his early electronic experiments on some TV show. Can't find it right now....

Bror Gadelius: Tro och öfvertro i gångna tider (Belief and superstition in past times)
Found two volumes of this very rare book from 1912 recently.... Dealing with witchcraft, paganism, sorcery, witchhunts in scandinavia, demonomania and so on. Many interesting chapters on mental illness and demonic possession. Written in intersting way with rich amount of illustrations and photos.

Today I finally ordered Pure Filth - got high expectations for it.

[Jaakko V.]

M.A. Numminen: Till Helsingfors (Swedish translation. Rönells.)
Amusing reading about a Juho Nitty (alter ego of M.A. Numminen) and his encounters with avantgarde / electronic music and different kinds of culture. Not to mention his huge interest in alcohol and women.... autobiographical. Always wanted to read more about his early days so this was a great opportunity to do so. There is some good video footage around of his early electronic experiments on some TV show. Can't find it right now....

This? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19o3s0ytZw

[tiny_tove]

I am not too kin on fantasy, (except for Howard and Tolkien), but this is classic.


Excellent Italian book about Gipsy culture from "insider" perspective, with in depth research on the Indo-Aryan origins, the different groups, language, etc.
I have just started it but it is definitely one of the best book on the subject I read apart from Fonseca's Bury me standing.


http://books.google.ch/books?id=L8TOLzWH1q0C&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

by ex high rank member of the Outlaws MC.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Ian Stuart Donaldson memories - by Mark Green
"Nazi Rock Star" by Paul Of London was pretty ok overview of band, but appeared to approach subject slightly too careful (I mean in attempt not to piss off the die hard fans with negative remarks what band surely should get). Came in 2002. This "memories" book came few years ago, 2007  I believe, and it's few hundred pages of his career observed via stories of friends, collaborators, supporters, and somehow related people. Includes most of all people who has nothing but praise. From bands a'la Brutal Attack, Störkraft, English Rose, etc etc. To his band mates etc. But also some people who are slightly critical or at least in mood to rather forget some phase on their own history. This includes for example Tony Wakeford, who actually didn't even give interview for book per se, but editor had selected few interview quotes where Tony speaks about the pre-Sol Invictus project and it's connections to R-O-R and White Noise Records.
It also includes some newspaper clippings, some comments from bands who played Skrewdriver cover songs (such as Antiseen). Occasional brief interview clips from man himself and not to mention the one and only existing interview of Ian's ex girlfriend who had also brief story about Lemmy.  Not a book to find in any regular book stores music sections, but if you liked various biographies of UK punk, I'm sure this needs to be in shelves as I doubt the "real press" will cover it. It's pretty amusing to compare same stories from perspective of different parties and how mythical proportions of "meetings" of oi lads from different political spectrum get.

[HongKongGoolagong]

Never met him myself but I know and sometimes drink with a number of people who grew up with ISD, many of whose critical views of him would not have been used for an obviously pro-slanted biography - but of course how to write an unbiased biography of such a person is a difficult matter. I would be interested to know if Mark Radcliffe's quotes from his book 'Showbusiness' about his experiences drumming in Skrewdriver in 1980 were used? He disguised ISD as 'Des' in the book for some reason. Don was his name to those he grew up with, many of whom were surprised by his move into pseudo-politics over the last decade of his life apparently at his dad's suggestion.

Recently read Charles Fleming 'High Concept' - astonishing book on Hollywood excesses of 80s/90s film producer Don Simpson (Top Gun, Beverley Hills Cop) - twisted S&M orgies, cocaine, prescription drugs and junk food.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

I don't know what Mark Radcliffe has been saying, but most certainly there are no real criticism in the book. It's all about how friendly, civilized, humble and well spoken the man was. Which most certainly can't be all the truth, hah..
But lets say compared to Paul Of London's book (aka Burnley aka No Remorse singer), there he goes into pretty laughable level of apologizing in foreword that he will have to be brutally honest about less-good Skrewdriver releases, and it ends up being merely on style of "material of this album was not as strong as Hail The New Dawn"! Haha...
But I guess we've all read enough about the violent monsters portrayed by "media", and it was perhaps purely logical this will provide just about opposite side.
Nevertheless, pretty harsh stories from early Dutch live show for example, where local band was unimpressed that they were just "warm up band" and they chased Skrewdriver members out of venue with knives. And while UK skins traditionally fought with bare fists, the Dutch skin carried bats, knives, iron knuckles, etc, and there was a mass fight.
Also pretty amusing story of ex- Combat 84 member turned into chealsea headhunter and engaging into ... was it 5 against 100 fight with skins and despite receiving hammer in the head assault - walked out as winners.

[online prowler]

Jean Genet - Funeral Rites.

Thanx for the thread. Saw a selection of books I marked with interest for the future. Anyone read Sotos' Pure Filth yet? Curious about that one, considering a buy. Other than that I recommend abuse forums for victims of violence etc.

[Jordan]

Finally found a copy of "The Most of S.J. Perelman" for a buck after looking for it for years. Perelman was a writer on the first couple of Marx brothers films, which strangely he is most famous for despite just being one writer of a committee who wrote the scripts. He wrote a lot of short stories for the New Yorker and Harpers Bazaar, which is what is mostly collected in the book. It's funny how even up to the eighties he was renown as Americas greatest humorist, but has since all but disappeared from the collective unconscious. I'd recommend it, but there may not be enough rape and racism for this crowd, although all the material is from '58 or before, so it isn't PC or anything.

[Jordan]

Finally found a copy of "The Most of S.J. Perelman" for a buck after looking for it for years. Perelman was a writer on the first couple of Marx brothers films, which strangely he is most famous for despite just being one writer of a committee who wrote the scripts. He wrote a lot of short stories for the New Yorker and Harpers Bazaar, which is what is mostly collected in the book. It's funny how even up to the eighties he was renown as Americas greatest humorist, but has since all but disappeared from the collective unconscious. I'd recommend it, but there may not be enough rape and racism for this crowd, although all the material is from '58 or before, so it isn't PC or anything.

Thanks for reminding me of his name. I think I owned a cheap hardback copy of this at one point (a nearby bookshop had about half a dozen copies of this book in their humour section) but I never properly delved into its contents at the time. Probably sold it on as I tend to hoard books rather than actually read them. I'll see if my local library has a copy tomorrow - probably due a much needed [re]visit as all I've been reading lately are books on minimalist music.

There's an okay biography by Dorothy Herrmann on Perelman that I read sometime last year. It's interesting that he was friends with a lot of international avant-garde artists and whatnot but he never did anything but write short humour pieces and cartoons. I guess publishers tried to persuade him to do a serious novel, but he just wouldn't do it.


Some favourite lines from his cartoons - "I don't know anything about medicine, but I know what I like."  "I've got Bright's disease, and he's got mine."

[ARKHE]

Read "Det parapornografiska manifestet" (the Parapornographic manifesto), a short text written by the Swedish libertine & book publisher Carl-Michael Edenborg. He's the head of Vertigo, who've since the early nineties been publishing all the classic pornographic literature (de Sade, Bataille, Delany, Reage, Apollonaire etc - tasty covers as well: http://vertigo.se/index.php?id=29), a whole lot of horror (Lovecraft, Meyrink, Poe), and shitloads of other more or less transgressive stuff (on anarchism, necrophilia, snuff movies etc). Anyway, this 60 something pages long manifesto details what Edenborg (Ph. D in history of ideas & philosophy) calls parapornography, building on the juxtaposition of pornography/anti-pornography and what he calls postpornography ("conscious/PC porn" more or less). A few days since I read it, plus it's pretty dense & intellectual, but what he basically means is that pronography & anti-pornography is built on, is that there is a human core, deep inside, that should be exploited/revealed/defiled or protected/hidden. Whereas parapornography does not accept that - pornography is Euclidean, parapornography is non-Euclidean; for example, The Atrocity Exhibition. No boundaries, no limits of the orgasm. As the cover says, "Parapornography accepts that the phallus is always cut off, that the castration precedes the phallic myth". Unfortunately it's just now been published in Swedish, perhaps we might see an English translation. A lot of it can definitely be related to aspects of industrial/power electronics culture.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Lord Of Flies - by William Golding.
I have vague recollections reading this as youngster. As it is one of very controversial, very pessimistic, could be of interest of any "industrial" people, but also written by Nobel prize winning author and really part of common literary culture, probably should be on reading list of anyone?
It was reminded to me by the "10 kirjaa vallasta" (10 books about power") radio series in Finnish Yle1, which I happened to catch this particular program about Lord Of Flies. As I already had goal to re-read the more complex of philosophical books what I have read as youngster (to see if I experience them differently now), this was obvious choice for it.

Bunch of 6-12 year old English boys crash on island during WWII. With no adults, no civilization, they have to try to set up some type of mini-society to survive and also use any means available to try send message to potentially by-passing ships. Which means fire = some. Written back in 1954, it's long before "Survivors" type of nonsense, and the tribes what are born out of necessities, human characteristics and hidden maliciousness, are something else.
It's utterly popular for studies etc. Allegories the novel offers in pretty short 250 pages length are relatively simple, yet full of possibilities! When I went to local antique/2nd hand book shop, I asked them this and got it for 4 euros. The old guy told this book is among top-5 requested 2nd hand book in Finnish used books site network. Once I bought it, the old man just sighed "read it, and go kill people".

[RyanWreck]

Reading "Franco: Soldier, Commander, Dictator". Like most books it has some leftist, knee jerk reactions to a lot of what Franco stood for and detracts from a lot of what he did instead of being an objective biography, which is what I want and have yet to find. I think Franco had a lot of great ideas but I'm not a huge fan of Catholicism and Christianity. Theoretically I like Mussolini's writings better but he was a coward and too self-serving (pretty much what you don't want in a Fascist party) unlike Franco who had a far better idea of how to command a military and was a soldier himself.

[RyanWreck]

Sweet! I had a friend who turned into a hustler too. And he usually dealt with truckers as well. Me and his roommate had to pick him up from a rest area once and we were trying to find him then he just hops out of some dudes cab. He dated this huge weight lifting black tweaker/steroid user (such a weird combination and I can't imagine those mood swings) when he was in San Diego who worked at a really popular bathhouse. He actually got clean for about 5 years and inherited his fathers construction company and then after about a year of running that he sold it to someone for like $10,000 and sold his house and pretty much just disappeared back into the streets. I can't see him still being alive with what he was doing and having all that cash to blow on junk and coke but who knows.

[Vigilante Ecstasy]

When I went to local antique/2nd hand book shop, I asked them this and got it for 4 euros. The old guy told this book is among top-5 requested 2nd hand book in Finnish used books site network. Once I bought it, the old man just sighed "read it, and go kill people".

Hah! This was propably Markku, the guy from Antikvaarinen Kirjakauppa Aleksis K.? Such a great fellow, I go there at least once a year, and every time I spend at least an hour there just talking. He could seem a little bit rude guy at first but in the end he's really nice to chat with. Last summer we talked in lenght about Marquis de Sade, and he told he has a special collection of Sade material at his home.